Just Two Questions
by Jason Barnett
Summary: After Chosen Xander has a couple of questions


Disclaimer: the characters belong to Joss.   
  
Buffy and Faith were training the new Slayers and Andrew was on a comic run. That left just the original Scoobies and Dawn present when Xander asked his first question.  
  
"Why is Buffy always right?"  
  
"I hardly think she's always right," Giles replied.  
  
"When I was possessed by the hyena she was the only one who thought it was something hellmouthy. Which I find very insulting, missy."  
  
"Sorry, Xander. I don't know what I was thinking. It was one thing not noticing I was a girl but you being so mean should've tipped me off to something. I'm supposed to be the smart one."  
  
"I would've known it was supernatural, if I'd seen him then and I was just a kid with a crush."  
  
"Which made you think he could do no wrong. I was old enough to knowhe had flaws and find them endearing."  
  
"Xander, you were saying?" Giles prodded.  
  
"Then there was Sid, although she was kind of backwards on that one. He wasn't normal but he was a good guy. Ted and Der Kinderstod. Those people she helped out in LA. She figured out something that would've taken a ton of reaearch in Sunnydale. I mean who knew time ran diferently in other dimensions?"  
  
"I did, actually. And it's not universal. Some run concurrently with this one."  
  
"She put the pieces together on the cursed candy."  
  
"We were just a few minutes away on that one," Willow interjected.  
  
"She figured out Kathy, that the soldiers needed to be watched, and called the Apocalypse that year. Then she figured out about Dawn, well she was the only one who realized anything was different. Well most stuff we did that year had to do with Dawn and Glory."  
  
"She was really nasty to me for a while there. I guess the change over from being an only child."  
  
"She was a little off last year but this year the big one. She wants to lead a mission for something important and we're all so damn scared we throw her out of her own home," Xander finsihed  
  
"Well from what she tells I think going there in force would've been a mistake. She actually did better without aide. But simply put Buffy is the Slayer. She has instincts that we lack. Instincts that lead her to battle. We can't understand them so we write them off as paranoia due to the rest of her life and experiences. I suppose it was foolish to repeat the same mistake so many times but we're only human. And to just grab onto that attack first mentality would lead us to danger because we lack those instincts."  
  
"Just one more." He pointed to the weapon hanging on the wall. "That is an axe, why the hell do we keep calling it a scythe?"  
  
"I've actually given that some that and have come up with three possible explanations. Given when it was created and by whom, women in ancient times, they might not have known better, what to call it properly. I doubt it. Much the way I doubt those men and women were who and what they appeared."  
  
Willow agreed eagerly, providing her own thoughts. "I know. They were kind of ancient but we've dealt with the First Slayer and she was way older and more primitive than what Buffy described them as. But on one side you have black men, who are actually kind of forceful with  
the giving and taking of power but stingy on the knowledge. On the other you've got white women, who create the power but hide it so it has to be searched for and then once you get it are kind of free with provifing information. Sort of a yin-yang thing going there. And there's lots of beliefs where that contrast of opposites are important. So maybe they were like those Powers That Be that Angel and everyone talk about."  
  
"Yes, exactly. My second thought is perhaps it's a bit of misdirection. If everyone refers to it as a scythe then people will come to believe it is one. It will be described as one in a battle and if there comes a time when it is threatened, no one will believe it is it."  
  
"Nice ax, but we're looking for a scythe."  
  
"Precisely, Dawn."  
  
"And the third idea," Xander wondered.  
  
"It might just be a title," Giles shrugged. "King Arthur's sword was called Excalibur, this might be the Slayer's Scythe. Cutting down the undead the way the Grim Reaper's cuts down people."  
  
End 


End file.
